Why Are The People Who Whined About Wheeler's Net Neutrality Rules Being '400 Pages' Silent About Pai's Being '539 Pages'

from the because-they're-fucking-hypocrites dept

Mike Wendy is an interesting guy. He's ever present on Twitter attacking pretty much anyone who is in favor of net neutrality and has a bit of a following. In his day job, he operates something called "Media Freedom" which is one of an astoundingly long list of astroturf operations parroting telco interests (nearly all of Wendy's prior career was spent working for telco industry groups). Over the last two years, Wendy has been one of the most vocal attackers of the Tom Wheeler's net neutrality rules -- and he had a pretty strong go to line about just how much of a "regulatory" burden the rules were. Let me see if I can find it... Oh, right.

Yes, as Wendy's repetition was designed to point out, over and over again, those old rules simply must be extra burdensome, because it's 400 pages and over 1700 footnotes. Of course, that's bullshit, and Wendy knows its bullshit -- but he wanted to misrepresent the rules and make them seem like a giant regulatory burden. The actual rules were just 8 pages. There were 392 other pages of legally required information including discussions of the various public comments and the various statements from the Commissioners, including lengthy dissent statements from the disagreeing commissioners. In the Wheeler ruling, Ajit Pai's dissent took up 64 pages and Michael O'Rielly's was another 15 pages. Yet, somehow, Wendy and others didn't bother letting people know that 89 pages of the 400 pages were explaining why the rules were (apparently) bad.

When the draft rules came out, at 210 pages, I wondered why Wendy and others were suddenly silent on the page length.

Last week, as you may have heard, Pai's actual final rules were released... and the full document weighs in at 539 pages. Again, those are not the actual rules. Those are just the rules, the legally required (and very detailed) explanation of the rules and all the Commissioners' statements. And guess who's suddenly angry about people misrepresenting why the new document is so long? Why, it's our old buddy, Mike Wendy:

Wendy is correct that a big chunk of the new document is Clyburn's appendix, which are Wheeler's original order (including all the required explanatory text), but remember, Wendy didn't bother to discount similar text appended to Wheeler's order at all. Instead, he used it repeatedly to falsely imply that the rules were a complicated 400 pages of burdensome regulations. Remember "400 pages, 1777 footnotes of "simple" Title II. Sure, Kev" from Wendy? But now, suddenly, it's nitpick, nitpick, nitpick about which parts are in favor and which parts are dissent. Fascinating.

To be fair, Fight for the Future similarly should not be playing up the "539 pages" for the same reasons that Wendy and other anti-neutrality folks shouldn't have played up the 400 pages. But at least unlike Wendy and others, Fight for the Future is just complaining about how bad the new rules are, not suggesting totally incorrectly, that the (false and misleading) length of the rules is somehow an indication of how "burdensome" and "complicated" the rules are.

Again, it's fine to make arguments about the actual rules (8 pages in the Wheeler order and 2 pages in the Pai order), but it should be quite clear that those who actually understand this stuff (like, say, someone who's worked in the telco policy space for decades) should acknowledge that they were absolutely full of shit in repeatedly arguing that the Wheeler rules were 400 pages. Or, if they're not willing to admit that, then why aren't they similarly complaining about the "539 pages" of the Pai "rules"? Maybe -- and I'm just spitballing here -- it's because they're total hypocrites who were happy to misrepresent the length of the rules when they didn't like them, but are now going to nitpick the specifics because using their very same argument against them would, I don't know, make them look ridiculous?

Reader Comments

How does this guy get compensated?

Not surprising to see opinion pieces writting by sock puppets but why do they bother posting in comments and on twitter at random times? Who pays them for this? Is it a fixed rate per post or something more sophisticated involving a measure of public opinion? Are his postings part of an online networking presence he can show to future employers? If this guy is self employed, he has great passion for his work, I'll give him that!

Re: Re: Re: How does this guy get compensated?

Re: Re: Re: Re: How does this guy get compensated?

So, if it's done overtly, you have that evidence of Soros paying protesters then?

Cool, verifiable evidence was always one of the things that got this idiocy labelled as conspiracy theory. I'd be interested in reading the documented reliable proof you're basing your claim upon, once you link it!

In it we see the usual tactics:- protesters are splpit in groups and roles to play. In other words "peaceful" protesters don't mix with the strange other group who mysteriously turned violent for no reason. (lol) ...so in this manny we the usual post-protest interview, where these a-holes claim they were there peacefully protesting, when all of a sudden, this mysterious other group came along and it turned violent.

- there are approved corridors and areas where the 'violent' protesters are allowed to become violent and/or vandalize property (apparently what happens is that business owners allied to the Soros cause are later compensated either directly or through insurance.

-protestors are instructed to not report money given to them as income.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How does this guy get compensated?

"As anyone is free to go search wikileaks themselves."

Yes, but nobody ever states which parts are the ones to look at. We just get obnoxious assholes attacking people when they ask for citations. Look at your reaction - I questioned your entire conspiracy theory, and your first reaction was to call me names and attack the disabled. That won't get you anywhere with intelligent honest people, even if your claims are true.

Thanks you for at least providing a link, as random and out of context as it is. Perhaps if the rest of you people were interested in such honest dialogue you might get somewhere with your claims, instead of name calling and ranting about a name nobody had ever heard of until the right decided they needed something to counter the documented claims against the Koch brothers.

If you want people to believe you, give them a reason to. Ranting and attacking those who question your uncited claims is not the tactic to use for this. Honest people should be civil and be willing to back up their own claims when asked.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How does this guy get compensated?

Oh, and it's worth noting that the images you have provided are in complete. This makes me suspicious - for example, assuming they are indeed all from the same document, what context is missing between pages 1 and 24 to give context for the reimbursements? Why did they feel the need to post page 13 twice, but miss out most of the rest of the document? Is this detail available elsewhere, or have these pages been cherry picked outside of context?

Wikileaks and the like can be useful, but far to many times partial documents presented out of context can be used to support false narratives. I'm not saying this is happening here, but the citation you provided does not stand on its own unless you're predisposed to rants about a certain type of conspiracy...

Yet again complaining about obscure persons complaining or not complaining about length of the rules?

This is a new low for even your kvetching. You "wrote" similarly around 6 Dec.

I take the comment above on lack of creativity as pointed at Masnick, not his target. I think Masnick just forgot he'd already gone with this once. -- At least, I hope forgot. If he actually thinks this stupid premise is worth repeating...

Is this rather Freudian fixation on length ALL that you can come up with in this complex area? -- I guess it's technically better than your imagining FUD, but doubt will please those alleged 27 Bangladeshi who view the site every day!

Re: Re: Re: Yet again complaining about obscure persons complaining or not complaining about length of the rules?

out_of_the_blue has claimed credit for Techdirt's coverage of Prenda Law. There are no shortage of ways for Masnick to inadvertently give out_of_the_blue a narcissistic ego trip, never mind on purpose.

Re: Yet again complaining about obscure persons complaining or not complaining about length of the rules?

I think Masnick just forgot he'd already gone with this once.

Reading is not your strong suit. I refer to and link to the earlier article in the post. The reason I wrote another one was because the length of the final order is noticeably even longer than the original one, and since most people (you excepted!) are interested in seeing the hypocrisy at play, it was worth discussing.

But I'm so glad that you're paying such careful attention. What would we do with your constant trolling?

I love how they named it the “Restoring Internet Freedom Order.” If these guys wrote legislation to repeal the 13th Amendment, they’d call it the “Providing Jobs and Outdoor Recreation for Non-Whites Act.”

I thought about all the talk about bogging the companies down with regulations and paper and we gotta free things up. Yeah, I get that.

But when I have to read through legalese, as an end user, to try to figure out what access and do/don't have, no one seems to care about us getting bogged down in paper. And we are far less equipped to handle it than mega-corps with legal departments (or should I get all bootstrappy and figure out legal documents for myself?).

Libertarianism is only good when it's convenient to a politician's or corporation's primary agenda. When it's not, they toss it out in the garbage. The same thing with any other law or regulation. If it's protectionist or convenient then keep it or strengthen. If it's inconvenient then it's obstructionist, burdensome, and needs to be replaced by something better on the bottom line even if the regulations are more convoluted than ever.

Hypocrisy is An Accepted Tactic

I feel Mike's discouragement at the blatant hypocrisy. And it is totally worth pointing out. However, I don't share is apparent surprise. Hypocrisy seems to be the most accepted political tactic these days. Most of politics to me seems to be *based* on hypocrisy. It's the best way to keep our deep them-vs.-us divisions in place.

The real problem is how ready people are to accept this hypocrisy when it is in their favor. I'm not outraged at the hypocrisy. I'm outraged at the lack of bipartisan outrage over any hypocrisy.